City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Welcome to the City of Riverside City Council meeting for October 20th, 2026. Welcome everyone. I'm Mayor Patricia Black Dawson. I will now call our meeting to order. I would please ask Councilmember Hammonway to please lead us in an invocation and the pledge.

Thank you, Mayor. If it's meaningful to you, please join me in a moment of prayer. God, creator and sustainer of life, we ask your presence with us today. Grant us clarity of mind, generosity of spirit as we do the work before us. In our deliberations and decisions, remind us to always seek the common good, to listen for the voices of those who often go unheard, and to work together toward a city that reflects dignity, opportunity, and hope for all. This we pray.

Amen. all right we will open today's meeting with public comment for items on our consent calendar closed sessions and any matters within the jurisdiction of the City Council

Thank you. We have a couple requests to speak in chambers. I'd like to please call Errol Kosiewicz forward.

Can you put it a little bit, push it a little bit down?

Thank you. Mr All right. Next I have Aurora Chavez Welcome miss Chavez

Thank you, Ms. Chavez. All right, next I have Ruben Greg Soto, followed by Jason Hunter.

Thank you. Jason Hunter? Welcome, Mr. Hunter.

Thank you, Mr. Garza. And I'm sure one of our assistant city managers would love to chat with you afterward or get together with you or the council member from that ward. Is that council member Ward? I'm not sure. Yes, it's my ward, yeah. Okay. So perhaps you can – you said it was Jackson?

Yeah, 4790 Jackson Street. We know the apartment complex well. I've been working with the property owners on trying to alleviate some of that. I'm looking for my staff right now. I don't see him in the room. But just hang out. I'll make sure they get a hold of you.

And we're sorry about that, Mr. Arza, but there's plenty of people up here that are happy to help. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next I have Patrick Maloney.

Thank you to General Services and Director Lee Withers for the Fox.

Thank you. All right. That was our last request to speak. So we'll close public comment and we're going to move on on our agenda. And we are now at item number two. This is our mayor and council member communications. I will start with council member Falcone.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, we're happy about the Fox Theater getting everything beautiful for Festival of Lights. And it just needs to happen anyway. It's our property. We need to maintain it. So a couple of things looking back and then looking ahead. We had a great in the north side, a Halloween spooktacular. It was quite spooky. And but, you know, I kept hearing people were All excited to be there. But the prize that everyone wanted to see was there was a great game the fire department put together that was throw a firefighter rubber ducky through a slot and you got candy. And that was the line

Thank you, Council Member Falcone. Council Member Cervantes is on her way. She had a doctor's appointment. She will be here soon. Council Member Robillard?

Thank you, Mayor. By the way, my staff is right here in the back of the room. If you want to go connect with her, she's right there in the black and white shirt. Thank you. Yes. So last week, I had the pleasure of attending the UCR AI Summit. And we had a couple hundred people there all talking about the AI industry and UCR's role in it. We also had the Woodcrest Career Day. So my alma mater got to go back and talk to the students about what a career in public service looks like and also we hosted the aerospace ecosystem roundtable where we had industry partners from the companies in riverside

council member condor thanks mayor a couple things i want to highlight several months ago the arlington little league which played at arlington's heights sports park had there been broken into again third or fourth time everything was stolen including their automatic external defibrillator the aed which they could not afford to replace so i got a call from the vice president of the league and asked if we could help so i contacted the non-profit that had given it originally and they unfortunately had used all the funding that they had on their grant fund So I called our awesome fire chief, Chie

Thank you Thank you mayor a couple events I want to touch on the we we had our national night out. I was after our last council meeting we had had national night out which was a citywide event was held at Hunt Park and Amazing turnout. I want to thank all of our first responders that were there and the community that came out. Wonderful event. Then this past Saturday, we had our Saturday before last, I should say on the 10th, I had my annual fall festival out at Vegas Park. Even though it was raining off and on, we had a packed packed house. Again, thanks to my team. I really want to say thank

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Hernandez.

Thank you, Mayor. On Thursday, October 15th, my staff and I had stopped by Mission View High School to provide Northgate gift cards towards the Alvord Cares program. This is to help aid them in their mission to address food insecurities with Alvord students and their families. ALONDRA SANCHEZ AND STAFF WERE KIND ENOUGH TO PROVIDE A TOUR OF THE PANTRY, SO THAT WAS GREAT. LATER THAT EVENING, I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO PROVIDE UPDATES AT THE VERY FIRST ALVER UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD MEETING HOSTED IN THE ARLANZA COMMUNITY. THIS WAS THE RESULT OF A MEETING WITH SUPERINTENDENT DR. REGGIE TOMPKIN

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Hemingway.

Thank you, Mayor. Just two quick things. Friday, October 23 at the La Sierra Park from 5 to 8, there will be a trunk or treat. It's a free event and open to all ages. So we would invite you to come out to La Sierra Park, October 23 from 5 to 8 p.m. Then next Wednesday, October 28, the Ward 7 Community Development Block Grant, the CDBG meeting will be taking place at the La Sierra Senior Center at 6 p.m. There we will learn about the CDGB funding, CDBG funding, and provide input on future housing and community development needs, particularly those affecting low and moderate income residents and

Thank you, Councilmember. Just a big congratulations to Chancellor Waldob Isak, who had his retirement celebration this last week, which I was able to attend and was wonderful to see all the great work he's done over the past 20 years. And thank you, Council Member Falcone, for attending the Rivers and Lands Conservancy Gala. I know how much you care about open space and conservation. So thank you for, and seeing the porcupine, I know. So I appreciate you being there. It's a wonderful organization. Just so folks know, we are in the middle of the Crosstown Showdown, the big competition between

I'll let you know. Yeah, a mission and run. Everybody, I see Miranda Evans out there. She also ran, so I see, yeah. And your daughter did too? Wow, a lot of people. You know what's cool about that? I have to say, sorry. It's, you know, so much we're so into our apps and we're on our phone all the time. It was like the whole community came out for this, 7,000 runners. And so I saw people I haven't seen in years. It was just really fun. It was a really wonderful community event. So I appreciate being able to get out some safe face-to-face stuff. Some upcoming meetings. We've got our Safety, Well

Thank you, Ms. Neves. And I thought perhaps we could invite your staff down to the well and we could take some pictures with the awards before we pass them on to our – because it's not enough to make you stand.

THANK YOU AND CONGRATS AGAIN. COUNCIL, I NEED YOU TO DECLARE ANY CONFLICTS OF INTEREST OR EX PARTE COMMUNICATIONS. ANYBODY? ANYTHING ON THE AGENDA? ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU, CITY ATTORNEY. All right. We are at our employee overview and recognition. And this month, it is our public utilities department. We get to hear from them. And I believe David Garcia, their trustee director, is here to give us a report.

From the electric- Give him a round of applause anyway, he's not here.

Thank you, Mr. Garcia. We appreciate it. And congrats to all your fabulous employees. And even those who were not recognized today, we know Public Utilities does a fabulous job. So thank you very much. Thanks.

All right. We are now at item 5A. And we get to celebrate a retirement today. And I'm going to pass it to our city manager, please, to take us in this next item.

Councilmember Condor, would you like to say a few words?

Yeah, well, Charlie's saying his hi's here. I want to tell you a quick Charlie Payne story. So I've been here a lot of years, and there are people that fortunately or unfortunately become my go-to people. You know, David Garcia, I go to him on all kinds of things, and David takes care of stuff that's not even in his area. Nathan Mustafa. Well, Charlie Payne became my go-to guy for public safety. And earlier this year, he was going to have to help me. It may have been May or April. I had a problem, and it's like, I don't know, 8 o'clock at night, and I call Charlie, and Charlie picks up the pho

Thank you. And how nice your whole family is here.

Um, let's see. We now have the introduction of our new inspector general. And for that, I'm going to pass it to council member Robillard, who happened to be the mayor pro tem and led the hiring, which went on and on and on. So we're going to let him do the honors of the introduction. Council member Robillard.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. Today is an important milestone for the city of Riverside as we officially welcome our first Inspector General, Ms. Lori Cox, who is here with us today at her new seat at the dais here. This moment has been a long time coming, and it began with the voters of Riverside approving the creation of this independent office and has taken months of work to get us to where we are today. Since June, I've had... Sorry, I'm going to go back to the very beginning. In November 2024, the voters of Riverside approved Measure L, establishing the foundation of an independent office

Thank you, Ms. Cox. Thank you, Council Member. All right. And, Council, we're going to take just a few minutes break right now. So if Ms. Cox would like to introduce herself to some of our members of community and staff, I think we'll just take about a 10-minute break, and then we'll come back and continue, if that's all right with you, Ms. Cox. All right. Thank you for being here. All right.

Everybody, if we could please return to our seats, we can move on on our agenda. All right. Thank you, everyone. All right, we are now at our consent calendar, and I will ask our city manager and council members one by one if they have any items they wish to pull. I will begin with our city manager.

Thank you. Council Member Falcone, word one. Pass. Word three. Pass. Word four. Pass. Word five. Pass. Word six. Pass. Word seven. Pass. Move to approve. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar with the additions noted by the city manager.

Thank you, everyone. All right, we are at item 636. This is a discussion item regarding signing, striping, and signal timing modifications at Madison and Emerald Street. We will open public comment for item 36.

All right. Thank you. With that, I'd like to ask Brent Craig to come forward, please, and give us a staff report. Welcome, Mr. Craig.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Craig. We have a number of requests to speak on this item from the public, and then we will come back to council. I will start with Paul Chavez. Welcome, Mr. Chavez.

Thank you, Ms. Mendoza-Collins. All right, I have Al Navarro followed by Daniel Garcia.

Thank you, Mr. Navarro. Daniel Garcia, followed by Elena Velasquez.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Velasquez. Okay, we will close public comment now and turn to the council member for that ward, who I'm sure has some thoughts on this topic. Council Member Mill.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank the residents of Casablanca, the members of CAG for being here today. Probably next to my house is where I spend more time in Ward 5 than in the community of Casablanca, and I've spoken to so many people in the community, and the feedback is almost universal. If they want to see the hawk signal removed and go back to a four-way stop, I hear it over and over again. So I just want to go ahead and make a motion that we approve option B, authorize the Public Works Department to issue repayment of the grant funds, then authorize our chief financial officer to recor

All right. Council, we have a motion and a second. Option B with some additional considerations. Any other comments or discussion? If not, please vote.

Thank you. And Casablanca Action Group, thanks for all you do.

All right, we are now at item 37, and this is a bid for paving, and we will open the public comment for this item.

All right. Thank you. With that, we'll have Ed Lara. Please give us a staff report.

Thank you, Mr. Lara. I don't see any requests to speak on this item, so we will close public comment and come back to our council, who I'm sure are very excited about this. Council Member Falcone?

Thank you, Mayor. We know whenever Ed's here, it's good news. It's positive improvements happening, money being spent. I move staff's recommendation.

Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. No further discussion. Please vote.

All right. Item 38 has been removed from the agenda, so we will now move on to 38A. I'm going to need to waive the Sunshine Ordinance to consider approval of a rental agreement, so we will open public comment for this item.

All right, thank you. And with that, Kevin Street, would you like to give us a staff report regarding the waving of the Sunshine Awards?

All right. Thank you, Mr. Street. I don't have any requests to speak on this item. We'll close public comment. Council members. Council Member Condor.

Thank you, Mayor. This is good leadership by the Public Works Department. Move to approve staff recommendation.

Okay, we have a motion and a second to waive the Sunshine Ordinance. Please vote.

All right, so now we come to 38B, which is the actual approval of the rental agreement for this equipment. We will open public comment for this item.

Thank you. Mr. Street, would you have anything to add to that?

Thank you, Mr. Street. We have no callers for this item, no requests to speak in chambers, so we'll close public comment. Council Member Condor.

Appreciate it, Mr. Street. Got a good report. We can't predict Mother Nature, and if we get inundated again, it's a health and safety issue. So I move to approve recommendations by the staff. Mr. Fagan.

It was in stereo. I don't know who did that first. All right. Council, motion and a second to approve staff certification.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Street. And thanks for being forward-thinking. Public work, sorry. Let's see. Are we at three yet? We've got eight minutes. Council, we've got to wait a second. I don't think we can get anything done in closed session. Eight minutes. So let's take a break for eight minutes and we will return for our public hearing. Hello, everyone. Council, we are now going to move on to our public hearings. Thank you to those council members who were timely in their return. I see. You have to be told. Okay. No. Thank you. We are going to now move on to item number 39. This is our fir

And with that, I'd like to ask Melina Carranza to give us this TEFRA report. Melina.

All right. Thank you. Ms. Carranza, do we have any callers for this? We will close public comment. And I just want to be clear for the public's edification that this is a state requirement that the city have this hearing approved. That's why people are wondering why we are, these aren't our bonds, these are not, they're private bonds, they're Cal Baptist bonds, but we have to hold the hearing, correct?

Okay, yeah, it's an interesting process. Okay, council, any questions, comments? All right, we have a motion and a second to approve.

All right. And I think you're going to stay up here for a little bit. We are now on to item 40. And this is the annual report of the Arlington Businesses Partnership. And we will open public comment for this item.

Can we get the second presentation up, please, on the Arlington bid? There we go. Hi. Welcome, Mr. Porta.

Mr. Port, I'm just going to do a note on time. We've exceeded the amount of time for the report. So if you can wrap up, that would be great. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Pert. I appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Carranza. And I don't see any. Wait, I do have a request to speak. Hold on. Cindy Keys Ross.

Thank you, Ms. Keys-Ross. We appreciate that and thanks for your service on the bid. All right. I don't have any other requests to speak on this item, so we'll close public comment and come back to Council Member Mill.

Thank you, Mayor. And what Cindy didn't tell you is that their business is the oldest business operating in Arlington, the barbershop that was started by your grandfather. So they're the oldest operating business in Arlington, been there a long time. So thank you for the kind words. I was going to just go ahead and say move staff support, but odds went over its time. So we're going to punish you for that. No, I just want to say thank you to the folks at the bid because they're kind of an extension of our council office at times. You know, when we have issues out there in the community, you kno

All right. We have a motion and a second to approve staff's recommendation. Please vote.

All right, thank you. Thank you. All right. Council, we have an interesting, our next one, item number 41, it's a CFD, so we have a separate script that I need to read before we get going, but I think we will open public comment, then I'm going to come and we'll go back to Ms. Carranza and we'll start there. Okay, so let's open public comment for this item.

Excuse me, Mayor. Sorry. I need to recuse myself from this item. I was the broker on the Ward 4 Victoria Grove project, and so I will recuse myself from this project.

All right. Thank you, Councilmember Robillard. Go ahead. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Carranza. So this is regarding CFD number 2026-1, Victoria Grove, Pinnacle Point, and the Ranch. This is the time and place set for a duly noticed public hearing regarding the proposed establishment of CFD number 2026-1 and the proposed issuance of bonds. I declare this public hearing open. The City Council has previously received and reviewed a Community Facilities District Report prepared by Webb Municipal Finance LLC, Special Tax Consultant to the City, which is hereby entered into the record of this public hearing. At this time, are there any members of the public

Mayor, if I could just real quick clarification. I just checked with Councilmember Robillard. It was actually, he had stated that he was involved in the Victoria Grove. It was actually Pinnacle Point. Okay. Thank you. Just so it's clear. All right.

Appreciate that. All right. So we will at this time entertain a motion.

All right, we have a motion and a second to approve staff's recommendation. So the resolutions that we have, okay, I guess we have to take a vote first, apologies, let's do that.

All right, thank you. The resolutions that you've just adopted establish the district, authorize the levy of special taxes within the district in accordance with the adopted rate and method of apportionment, determine the necessity to incur bonded indebtedness, and call an election within the district. Which election is to be held at this time by the city clerk? City clerk, I will turn it over to you to open the ballot.

Yeah, there is no, we've already done public comment. I appreciate that. Thank you. That was an error.

So having heard the statement of the city clerk certifying the results of the election I will now entertain a motion to adopt the resolution of the City Council of the City of Riverside acting in its capacity as the legislative body of CFD number 2026-1 of the City of Riverside certifying the results of the October 20th 2026 special tax and bond elections All right, thank you. We have a motion and a second. Please vote.

Thank you. With respect to authorizing the levy of a special tax within the district, I will now entertain a motion to waive a reading of the proposed ordinance to levy a special tax within the district and to introduce the ordinance of the City Council of the City of Riverside acting in its capacity as the legislative body of CFD number 2026-1, authorizing the levy of special taxes within the district.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

I appreciate it, and thanks, Council, with your patience for that item. It's very important whenever we establish a CFD to ensure we do it correctly. So thank you. All right, we are now at item number 42. This is, I'm not even going to read this one. It is case, planning commission case 2025-00439. This is involving TDA Investment Group and the EIR addendum. So we will open public comment on this item.

Veronica Hernandez, you've cut your hair.

It went a little bit shorter than usual. Thank you, Brian. All right, we will have a report by Brian.

It doesn't appear that we have any requests to speak on this item. We will close public comment. Council, this is word two, I believe. Is the council member?

All right. Okay, just a moment. Okay. Do they have to vote again? Okay, please vote. Thank you.

All right, thank you. And I believe this is our last public hearing. Item number 43, is it? Let's see. I think so. Yes, so our last public hearing is Planning Case 2026-00408. And this is, well... It's a zoning and title change. So we will ask clerks and managers to please give us a staff report after I open public comment for this item.

I have a motion by ward three and a second by ward seven. Please vote.

All right, thank you. Thank you very much. And council, now we are going to adjourn to closed session. I will call on our city attorney please to give us a description of our closed session items.

Thank you. And we have no evening session tonight, so council will return from closed session to close the meeting, but that's it. Thank you.

Hey Council is returning from closed session All right City Council is back from closed session, and I will call on our city attorney, please, to report out on our closed session actions.

All right. Thank you. Council, I know at least one of you has future agenda items or no? Okay. All right. Okay. Anybody have any future agenda items that they want to bring up? No, I don't see anybody. All right. We are now adjourned, and we will see you next on November 10th.